


'Cause the rest of you, the best of you (Honey, belongs to me)

by serendipityinwords



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Angst, F/M, Jealousy, post tcp, pre twk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 15:12:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17810369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipityinwords/pseuds/serendipityinwords
Summary: Jude catches the eye of an old foe. Cardan doesn't seem too happy about it.Post-TCP and Pre-TWK





	'Cause the rest of you, the best of you (Honey, belongs to me)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this sooo long ago but I hadn't the motivation to finish it until now. I'm planning on starting a series of Jealous!Cardan fics because It's What He Deserves. Anyways, enjoy!

By the time Jude had realised who exactly is heading towards her, it’s much too late to retreat. Locke takes his time approaching her, with his long drawn out smirk and much too graceful gait. Anything short of a polite exchange with her future brother-in-law would be a sign of cowardice. Try as she might, she can’t stomach the idea of smug Locke thinking he still has any sort of effect on her.

Huh. Maybe he does.

She didn’t think this revel could get any worse.

Jude forces herself to stay still until he finally catches up to her. She can’t be sure, but she thinks she catches a glimpse of a face like hers in the crowd. She can’t decide if she wants Taryn to watch or turn away. The conflict in her chest causes a spike of shame.

She is a kingmaker. And here she is desperate to make her treacherous sister love her again. Anger overshadows any sort of reservation she might have had.

She tilts her head up to meet his eyes. He still is as handsome as ever. Even more handsome, with the delight and fascination glimmering in his eyes. Jude doesn’t so much as blink.

“My lady,” Locke drawls, “lovely doesn’t quite suffice to describe how you look tonight.”

It’s a faerie compliment if she’s ever heard one, in that, it isn’t really one at all. She raises an eyebrow accordingly. Surely even he must acknowledge that she isn’t one to fall for a pretty faerie’s pretty words. At least, not anymore. A flash of black eyes in her head. Not all the time. Not out loud.

Locke lets out a laugh at that. She doesn’t like the look in his eye. She doesn’t want to be another impossible to decipher story to anyone. So, when he leans in, almost as if to see what would happen, she genuinely doesn’t know what to do.

Jude hears the sharp intake of breath from somewhere in the room. She doesn’t like the idea of the folk laughing about how Locke had acquired both the Duarte twins in the end. The memory of Cardan’s infuriating smirk when she had asked about Locke’s intentions was grating enough. But she could not deny, try as she might, the appeal of pressing her lips against his to spite one person. A flash of black eyes and a much too arrogant smirk. Maybe two people.

But it is just a part of her. Most of her, almost all of her recoils at the thought of kissing him. She’d die first.

Jude takes a deliberate step back. Locke blinks for a second, but the amusement returns to his face soon enough and in full force. For some reason, she knows that whatever she might have done, Locke would still find a way to delight in it.

He always won in the end. For a brief moment, the first in a long time, she wishes she couldn’t lie. Even if it’s just so Locke would know that she means the terrible things she wants to say to him. But she knows better than anyone that he’s faerie. They are immortal beings with cruel whims. He would respond to nothing but a sword in his side. Decorum would suggest that stabbing members of the court isn’t recommended. It didn’t stop her before, but with power comes new risks. Most, she found, she was not willing to take. It was depressing.

She pushes her way through the crowd. She registers the court’s obvious delight in her frazzled state state, but she can’t bring herself to care. She’d let the folk win tonight.

Jude’s initially too upset to pay attention to what’s happening. By the time she realises that someone has followed her out into the deserted hallway, she has no time to curse herself for her stupidity. She’d promised herself a long time ago that she’d never let a boy distract her like this. It looks like her resolve is going to need some work.

She tightens her grip around the iron dagger she’s recently taken to keeping with her. She knows she shouldn’t, but Jude hopes that it’s Locke so that she’d finally have a good reason to stab him. She spins around, her skirts fanning around her, knuckles white around the hilt of her knife when she comes face to face with the high king himself.

He lifts his long-fingered hands in a placating gesture. “I suppose I can’t command you not to kill me.” His bright eyes betray the casual tone of his words. Jude lowers the dagger, glowering, and sheathes it with more force than strictly necessary.

“Cardan.” She bows lightly, more to find something to do than anything. Too late she realises no one is around and she had showed him a level of respect she hadn’t bothered with in months.

He raises an eyebrow. “Your king, your moon and stars, etcetera”

Jude clenches her teeth, hard enough that she knows it’ll hurt in the morning. “I didn’t think you’d leave a revel early if you could help it.”

“You seemed to have taken all the fun with you.”

He leans against the wall lazily. No one but her would notice tension lining his shoulders. She sees it, she’s just too tired to care.  

“And now I’m taking the _fun_ to my chambers.”   

They’re both a little stunned by her words. She certainly hadn’t meant to say it, doesn't bother to wonder why she'd said it, but Jude can't find it in her to take it back. She makes sure her expression remains carefully neutral as she sweeps her gaze over him. She gets caught on the way he swallows, at the tightening of his jaw, at the glimmer in his eyes that can only be partially attributed to all the wine he’d had. The beautiful line of his mouth had her positively entranced when it starts to twist a little meanly. Jude jolts slightly. She’s travelled in time to when she had all of his unearned hate and attention.

“Not alone, I presume”

She registers some shock, like someone had splashed cold water on her face and she’s the one rousing from a drunken stupor.

She spins on her heel and starts to leave again before she could do something stupid like slug the high king of faerie across his smug, stupid face.

Jude’s barely made it a few steps when he talks again. “If you had kissed him, I might have driven a sword through his chest.”

His voice is matter-of-fact and casual, like he’d said nothing out of the ordinary. But this is not something a king says to his seneschal. It’s not something a faerie says to a mortal. And it’s definitely not something someone like Cardan says to someone like Jude, no matter what feelings he might have had for her in the past. She knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she won’t soon forget it. After all this time, he’s still managed to carve himself into her. She hates him for it. 

Jude doesn’t move an inch. She doesn’t have the inclination, nor the courage to see his expression. Her heart thuds treacherously in her chest. She doesn’t trust her face not to betray every single unknowable thing she has ever felt for him. She trusts her voice little more. Still, ignoring what he said would be the biggest indicator of her heart.

“Oh, I would love to see that,” she says, her voice coming out steadier than she feels, “maybe I should go find him.”

She hears him let out a pained laugh. Despite everything, it gives her a nasty spike of pleasure. “You are much crueler than I ever gave you credit for.”

Jude turns around at this, eyes blazing. “Then you have no one to blame but yourself for underestimating me.”

She has rarely seen Cardan anything less than self-assured and in control of everything. Even when she knew better than anyone that he was not. When she meets his eyes, he’s not heart-broken by any measure of the word. But he does look someone has snatched the ground from under him. He recovers quickly, but it’s too late. She’s seen it all. She can’t unsee it. She knows it would follow her into sleep and way past that.

A second goes by. There’s a storm in Jude’s heart. He nods, eyes downcast, and leaves.  

Cardan is the cruelest man she knows. The fact that he doesn’t know it only makes her want to cry.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm rubysvida on tumblr!


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